WHAT THE "BREAD WINNERS" LIKE IN THEIR WIVES--A LITTLE CONSTITUTIONAL OPPOSITION.
It would not be holding the balance of the sexes fairly, if after saying all that can be said in favor of men's wives, we did not say something on the side of women's husbands. In these clever days the husband is a rather neglected animal. Women are anxious enough to secure a specimen of the creature, but he is very soon "shelved" afterwards; and women writers are now so much occupied in contemplating the beauties of their own more impulsive sex that they neglect to paint ideals of good husbands. There has been also too much writing tending to separate the sexes. It is plain that in actual life all the virtues can not be on one side, and all the faults on the other; yet some women are not ashamed to write and speak as if such were really the case. The wife is taught to regard herself as a woman with many wrongs, because her natural rights are denied her. She is cockered up into a domestic martyr, and is bred into an impatience of reproof which is very harmful and very ungraceful. If we look about us, we find that in our cities, especially, this is producing some very sad results. Some of the men are getting very impatient at the increasing demands of women for attention, for place, and for consideration; and, on merely selfish grounds, it is hardly doubtful whether our women in the upper and middle classes do not demand too much. It is evident that, as society is constituted, man is the working and woman, generally, the ornamental portion, of it, at least in those classes to which Providence or society has given what we call comfortable circumstances. Woman may do, and does do, a great deal of unpleasant, tiresome work; she fritters away her time upon occupations which require "frittering;" but beyond that she does not do the "paying" work. The husband, or houseband, still produces the money. He is the poor, plain, working bee; and the queen bee too often sits in regal state in her comfortable hive while he is toiling and moiling abroad.
It results from the different occupations of the two sexes, that the husband comes home too often worried, cross, and anxious; that he finds in his wife a woman to whom he can not tell his doubts and fears, his humiliations and experience. She, poor woman, with little sense of what the world is, without any tact, may bore him to take her to fresh amusements and excitements; for, while he has been expending both brain and body, she has been quietly at home. A certain want of tact, not unfrequently met with in wives, often sets the household in a flame of anger and quarreling, which might be avoided by a little patience and care on the part of the wife.
It is not in human nature for a man who has been hard at work all day to return to his home toiled and weary, or with his mind agitated after being filled with many things, and to regard with complacency little matters which go awry, but which at another time would not trouble him. The hard-working man is too apt to regard as lazy those who work less than himself, and he therefore looks upon the slightest unreadiness or want of preparation in his wife as neglect. Hence a woman, if she be wise, will be constantly prepared for the return of her husband. He, after all, is the bread-winner; and all that he requires is an attention less by far than we should ordinarily pay to a guest. In the good old Scotch song, which thrills our heart every time it is sung, and makes us remember, however skeptical we may have grown, the true worth and divinity of love, the wife's greatest pleasure is that of looking forward to the return of her husband. She puts on-her best clothes and her sweetest smile; she clothes her face with that fondness which only a wife's look can express; she makes her children look neat and pretty--"gi'es little Kate her cotton gown, and Jock his Sunday coat" because the husband is returning. There is not a prettier picture throughout the whole range of literature. How her love breathes forth--
"Sae sweet his voice, sae smooth his tongue;
His breath like caller air;
His very foot has music in 't
As he comes up the stair."
And the love which thus colors with its radiant tints the common things of this life, which makes poverty beautiful, and the cottage richer than the palace, will be sure to teach the heart which possesses it how to manage the husband.
In "managing a man"--an important lesson, which some women are very anxious to impress upon others--immense tact and delicacy are wanted, but are very seldom found. Wives should remember that they had better, very much better, never try to manage, than try and not succeed. And yet all men like to be managed, and require management. No one can pretend to be the be-all and end-all in a house. It is from his wife that the husband should learn the true value of things--his own dignity, his position, and even his secondary position by her side as manageress. But, if she be wise, she will not make this too apparent. Directly the voice gets too loud, the tone too commanding, and the manner too fussy, the unhappy man begins to suspect that he is being "managed," and in nine cases out of ten sinks into utter imbecility, or breaks away like an obstinate pig. Both these symptoms are bad, and perhaps the first is the worst. No true woman can love and reverence a man who is morally and intellectually lower than herself, and who has driveled down into a mere assenting puppet. On the other hand, the pig-headed husband is very troublesome. He requires the greatest care; for whatever his wife says he will refuse to do; nay, although it may be the very essence of wisdom, he will refuse it because he knows the behest proceeds from his wife. He is like a jibbing horse, which you have to turn one way because you want him to start forward on the other; or he more closely resembles the celebrated Irish pig, which was so obstinate that his master was obliged to persuade him that he was being driven to Dublin, when his back was towards that city, and he was going to Athlone!
One part of management in husbands lies in a judicious mixture of good humor, attention, flattery, and compliments. All men, as well as women, are more or less vain; the rare exceptions of men who do not care to be tickled by an occasional well-turned compliment only prove the rule. But, in the case of a husband, we must remember that this love of being occasionally flattered by his wife is absolutely a necessary and natural virtue. No one needs to be ashamed of it. We are glad enough to own, to remember, to treasure up every little word of approval that fell from the lips of the woman we courted. Why should we forget the dear sounds now she is our wife? If we love her, she may be sure that any little compliment--an offered flower, a birthday gift, a song when we are weary, a smile when we are sad, a look which no eye but our own will see--will be treasured up, and will cheer us when she is not there. Judiciously used, this conduct is of the greatest effect in managing the husband. A little vanity does not, moreover, in such cases as these, prove a man to be either a bad man or a fool. "All clever men," says a great observer, "are more or less affected with vanity. It may be blatant and offensive, it may be excessive, but not unamusing, or it may show itself just as a large soupçon, but it is never entirely absent." The same writer goes on to say that this vanity should by no means be injudiciously flattered into too large a size. A wife will probably admire the husband for what he is really worth; and the vanity of a really clever man probably only amounts to putting a little too large a price on his merits, not to a mistake as to what those merits are. The wife and husband will therefore think alike; but, if she be wise, she will only go to a certain point in administering the domestic lumps of sugar. "A clever husband," says the writer we have quoted, "is like a good despot; all the better for a little constitutional opposition." Or the same advice may be thus put, as it often is, by a wise and cautious mother-in-law: "My dear," she would say, "you must never let your husband have matters all his own way."
A woman who abdicates all her authority, who is not queen over her kitchen, her chamber, and her drawing-room or best parlor, does a very dangerous and foolish thing, and will soon dwarf down into a mere assenting dummy. Now old Burleigh, the wise counselor of Queen Elizabeth, has, in his advice to his son, left it upon record that "thou shalt find there is nothing so irksome in life as a female fool." A wife who is the mere echo of her husband's opinions; who waits for his advice upon all matters; who is lazy, indolent, and silly in her household; fussy, troublesome, and always out of the way or in the way when she is traveling; who has no opinions of her own, no temper of her own; who boasts that "she bears every thing like a lamb;" and who bears the breakage of her best china and the desecration of her white curtains with tobbaco-smoke with equal serenity; such a woman may be very affectionate and very good, but she is somewhat of a "she-fool." Her husband will too often first begin to despise and then to neglect her. She will follow so closely on the heels of her husband's ideas and her husband's opinions that she will annoy him like an echo. Her genuine love will be construed into something like cunning flattery; her very devotion will be mistaken; her sweet nature become tiresome and irksome, from want of variety; and, from being the mistress of the house, she will sink into the mere slave of the husband. A wife should therefore learn to think, to walk alone, to bear her full share of the troubles and dignities of married life, never to become a cipher in her own house, but to rise to the level of her husband, and to take her full share of the matrimonial throne. The husband, if a wise man, will never act without consulting his wife; nor will she do any thing of importance without the aid and advice of her husband.
There is, however--and in these days of rapid fortune-making we see it constantly--a certain class of men who rise in the world without the slightest improvement in their manners, taste, or sense. Such men are shrewd men of business, or perhaps have been borne to the haven of fortune by a lucky tide; and yet these very men possess wives who, although they are of a lower sphere, rise at once with their position, and in manner, grace, and address are perfect ladies, whilst their husbands are still the same rude, uncultivated boors. These wives must be wise enough to console themselves for their trials; for indeed such things are a very serious trial both to human endurance and to human vanity. They must remember that they married when equals with their husbands in their lowliness, and that their husbands have made the fortune which they pour at their feet. They will recollect also that their husbands must have industry, and a great many other sterling good qualities, if they lack a little polish; and, lastly, that they are in reality no worse off than many other women in high life who are married to boors, to eccentric persons, or, alas! too often to those who, with many admirable virtues, may blot them all by the indulgence in a bosom sin or an hereditary vice.